May 2008

Global Warming – Part 1

People keep asking me to blog about global warming. I have so far avoided the topic for four reasons:

1. My profound ignorance on the topic.2. My inability to evaluate the claims on both sides.3. My preference of not being scared shitless about drowning.4. My observation that scary predictions about the future rarely happen.

This is one of the many, many cases where ignorance has utility. I can’t do much to stop global warming, but I can do plenty to ignore it and not worry myself into a coma before I drown in melted glacier water.

Anyway, recently I got dragged into the debate by a comment left by reader Bruce Harrison. He objected to a prior post in which I noted our President was ignoring the consensus of scientists on the question of global warming. I called this sort of behavior stupid.

Bruce countered by calling me arrogant and ignorant. So far, his opinion was spot on, so I figured it was worth seeing what else he had to say. This led me down a path of random, unreliable fact-gathering that I like to call “research.”

As I already noted, I’m not qualified to evaluate the science behind global warming. The best I can do is to evaluate the media reports of that science. Here’s the path my “research” took me.

In round one, I accepted the majority opinion of leading scientists, that global warming is happening, and that a big cause of that warming is all the frickin’ people and their energy-gobbling ways. A good representation of all those scientists is here on Wikipedia.

Hmmm. That seems like a body blow to the idea that the science of global warming is settled. Then I noticed a follow-up comment on this blog by reader rokusan, who pointed to a web story about how the petition by the dissenters is not credible.

At this point in my “research” I was back to thinking the majority of scientists are probably right. You can find dissenters for any view. You can even find thousands of them if you put some effort into it. So I discounted the petition by the dissenters.

Then I looked at the next link provided by Bruce. It’s for a video called "The Great Global Warming Swindle." I figured this would be good for a laugh, kind of like a creationist museum with cowboys riding dinosaurs. It’s a long video, so I’ll summarize it after showing this link.

The gist of the video is that Al Gore and the scientists got the cause-and-effect thing backwards. There is a strong correlation between carbon dioxide levels and temperatures throughout history, but temperature increases come first by hundreds of years. Warmer weather heats the oceans and produces more carbon dioxide.

So what causes the extra heat? According to the experts on the video, the data says it’s clearly the sun. When the sun has extended periods with lots of sun spots, it raises the temperature on Earth a bit. That warms the oceans, which releases more carbon dioxide.

According to the video, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by humans is miniscule, and our industrialization doesn’t even correlate with changes in Earth’s temperatures. In summary:

Sun = huge hot thing that keeps fucking with us

SUV = drive all you want

As I’ve noted, and will continue to note, I’m not qualified to judge the science of global warming. But if you ask me to judge the persuasiveness of competing media accounts, I’d say the argument against people causing global warming is the strongest.

The video also does a surprisingly good job of explaining why the majority of scientists are politically and financially motivated to get the science of global warming wrong. I can’t judge the accuracy of that assertion, but the video is exceptional in its persuasiveness.

I expect the comments to this post to include convincing evidence that global warming is caused by people. If you plan to do that, watch the video first. It probably addresses most of your points.

Go.

[Update: It took about ten minutes for reader Chris Graham to post this link debunking the video "The Great Global Warming Swindle.": http://www.durangobill.com/Swindle_Swindle.html. Obviously I am unqualified to judge either the video or the debunking to it, but the last thing I read alway seems the most persasive.]

Comments

Al Gore is a finest example of America hypocrisy,during his VP,carbon polluter got go ahead to pollute our earth from his administration in return for big financial contribution,at the end of his office,stop global warming become the fight of his crusade for a better world which affected the developed nations so much.

Al Gore is a finest example of America hypocrisy,during his VP,carbon polluter got go ahead to pollute our earth from his administration in return for big financial contribution,at the end of his office,stop global warming become the fight of his crusade for a better world which affected the developed nations so much.

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The diagnosis of the future of the planet cannot be gloomier. To the numerous elements that damage the environment, we must now add others, like the direct consequences of turning food into fuel, established as the economic policy guideline of the United States, designed and defended at all costs by the US president.

The issue has been presented on many occasions as a warning of the potential danger that, if continued, will affect the indispensable conditions for the life on the planet. Evidently at the service of the large transnationals, which produce 25 percent of the contaminating gas emissions, the White House has justified its position and has systematically refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

The inhabitants of the planet are required to act urgently. Maybe it's not too late.

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"The scientific arguments presented in The Great Global Warming Swindle can be stated quite briefly:

1. There is no proof that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from human activity. Ice core records from the past 650,000 years show that temperature increases have preceded—not resulted from—increases in CO2 by hundreds of years, suggesting that the warming of the oceans is an important source of the rise in atmospheric CO2. As the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapor is far, far more important than CO2. Dire predictions of future warming are based almost entirely on computer climate models, yet these models do not accurately understand the role or water vapor—and, in any case, water vapor is not within our control. Plus, computer models cannot account for the observed cooling of much of the past century (1940–75), nor for the observed patterns of warming—what we call the “fingerprints.” For example, the Antarctic is cooling while models predict warming. And where the models call for the middle atmosphere to warm faster than the surface, the observations show the exact opposite.

The best evidence supporting natural causes of temperature fluctuations are the changes in cloudiness, which correspond strongly with regular variations in solar activity. The current warming is likely part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that’s been traced back almost a million years. It accounts for the Medieval Warm Period around 1100 A.D., when the Vikings settled Greenland and grew crops, and the Little Ice Age, from about 1400 to 1850 A.D., which brought severe winters and cold summers to Europe, with failed harvests, starvation, disease, and general misery. Attempts have been made to claim that the current warming is “unusual” using spurious analysis of tree rings and other proxy data. Advocates have tried to deny the existence of these historic climate swings and claim that the current warming is "unusual" by using spurious analysis of tree rings and other proxy data, resulting in the famous “hockey–stick” temperature graph. The hockey-stick graph has now been thoroughly discredited.

2. If the cause of warming is mostly natural, then there is little we can do about it. We cannot control the inconstant sun, the likely origin of most climate variability. None of the schemes for greenhouse gas reduction currently bandied about will do any good; they are all irrelevant, useless, and wildly expensive:
Control of CO2 emissions, whether by rationing or elaborate cap–and–trade schemes
Uneconomic “alternative” energy, such as ethanol and the impractical “hydrogen economy”
Massive installations of wind turbines and solar collectors
Proposed projects for the sequestration of CO2 from smokestacks or even from the atmosphere

Ironically, even if CO2 were responsible for the observed warming trend, all these schemes would be ineffective—unless we could persuade every nation, including China, to cut fuel use by 80 percent!

3. Finally, no one can show that a warmer climate would produce negative impacts overall. The much–feared rise in sea levels does not seem to depend on short–term temperature changes, as the rate of sea–level increases has been steady since the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. In fact, many economists argue that the opposite is more likely—that warming produces a net benefit, that it increases incomes and standards of living. Why do we assume that the present climate is the optimum? Surely, the chance of this must be vanishingly small, and the economic history of past climate warmings bear this out.

But the main message of The Great Global Warming Swindle is much broader. Why should we devote our scarce resources to what is essentially a non–problem, and ignore the real problems the world faces: hunger, disease, denial of human rights—not to mention the threats of terrorism and nuclear wars? And are we really prepared to deal with natural disasters; pandemics that can wipe out most of the human race, or even the impact of an asteroid, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs? Yet politicians and the elites throughout much of the world prefer to squander our limited resources to fashionable issues, rather than concentrate on real problems. Just consider the scary predictions emanating from supposedly responsible world figures: the chief scientist of Great Britain tells us that unless we insulate our houses and use more efficient light bulbs, the Antarctic will be the only habitable continent by 2100, with a few surviving breeding couples propagating the human race. Seriously!"

"Their data derived from a Hansen version, but the graphic artist made a plotting error in the horizontal axis which had the effect of dilating the second half of the second 20th century. They say that they corrected the graphic for the 2nd screening and sent me a copy of the new graphic, which reconciles to a Hansen version."

"With regard to reports that one contributor says he was "misled" by the programme and "misrepresented" within it, Channel 4 has a detailed correspondence which shows this is not the case. The view that Professor Egil Friss-Cristensen, head of the Danish Space Centre, "incorrectly handled data" and used "faulty methods" in his research is contested in his response, and he has demonstrated a good correlation between solar-cycle length and temperature. Professor John Christy, head of the Earth System Science Centre at the University of Alabama, also disputes the claim that he has been "proved wrong", and his most recent (2005) data on the heating of the lower atmosphere have not been challenged. There were many other voices in the film that present a powerful argument."

"This contemptible attempt at gagging won't work. The reason they want to suppress The Great Global Warming Swindle is because the science has stung them. By comparison look at the mountains of absurd nonsense pedalled in the name of 'manmade climate change'. Too many scientists have staked their reputations and built their careers on global warming. There's a lot riding on this ridiculous theory. The DVD will be on sale shortly at a shop near you."

"In the course of translating complex data to a stylised television graphic, an inadvertent error occurred in the short sequence of data of solar activity between 1625 and 1700. This point of detail has been rectified for future transmissions. It does not affect the argument of the film."

"Alternatively, this could indicate that solar cycle length is not (as is the case for the sunspot number) a perfect descriptor of solar activity associated with climate."

"The last sentence above illustrates the dilemma for the physicist and the limitations of correlation analyses. For a physicist a break down of a correlation where you would expect one is just as – or sometimes even more - informative as a good correlation when it comes to the ultimate goal, which is to understand the physics. Climatologists are more concerned whether the observations fit their preconceived model and prefer to describe solar activity by one single parameter. But solar activity can not be described by a single number. There are many different manifestations of the turbulent and 3-dimensional distribution of energy release from the Sun, and for a physicist the real challenge is to find those parameters of solar activity that best correlate with climate in order to provide a clue regarding the exact physical mechanism that could be responsible for a cause and effect relationship. The present case illustrates how science works. In 1997 the results of a parallel line of research indicated a more direct physical link between solar activity and climate (Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, 1997 [Journ. Atm. Sol. Terr. Phys., 59:1225-32]). This result was later refined with more and better observations and documented that during the last two solar cycles there is a very good correlation between the solar modulation of the cosmic rays and the low altitude cloud cover (Marsh and Svensmark, 2000 [Space Science Review, 94: 215-30]). So therefore, and in spite of the fact that the solar cycle length seemed not to explain the most recent temperature increase after 1985, solar variations still do have direct effect on important climate parameters. How large this effect may be on the global temperature is currently being investigated, and is outside the scope of this comment. But there is no reason to neglect a contribution from man made greenhouse gases. The question is how much. Only increased understanding of the physical processes can give us the answer."

"The Swindle complainants should be careful what they ask for. If Durkin had to re-do the section on the Stick, he might well come up with something that is much more powerful than what he’s presently got."

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I totally agree with you.
Global Warming will happen regardless of what people do and it's pointless to worry about it..
besides..
if it is going to happen, our generation will be long gone so it doesn't really matter either way to me..
and...
we're known to adapt to culture.. evolve or whatever.. so who knows, maybe mankind will adapt and live on...

I totally agree with you.
Global Warming will happen regardless of what people do and it's pointless to worry about it..
besides..
if it is going to happen, our generation will be long gone so it doesn't really matter either way to me..
and...
we're known to adapt to culture.. evolve or whatever.. so who knows, maybe mankind will adapt and live on...

Some Dweeb named Dave said:
I don't understand how hard it is to understand that people burning fossil fuels releases CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, that that is heating the planet, and that heating is causing the climates to change world-wide. It's pretty straightforward actually.
~~~

Really? So explain how CO2 was quintuple the current levels during the late Carboniferous, with a lower average global temperature.

After all, it's straightforward, right? Which is why we've had 99.999% accurate weather forecasts for the last century.

Oh, and we're going to run out of oil by 1980.

And generate so much heat that Mars, Jupiter and Pluto will feel it.

I have a simple solution to the debate: every time some nutter wets his pants about TEOTWAWKI, I go out back and burn another tire. For Dave, I'll burn two.

In his debunking of the "Swindle" video DurangoBill uses an interesting graph; the one that shows a corrolation between Methane, CO2 and Temp. over the last 500,00 years or so. There appears to be an enormous spike in all three lines every 100 to 125 thousand years and we are approaching the tip of the most current spike now, right on schedule.
So my question is: If "Man" is causing the current round of "Global Warming" what caused the one 100 thousand years ago and the one 100 thousand years before that one?
Also, the current spike is not as high as the previous ones, yet.

Haha, I love the way the guy claims that global warming debunker uses manipulated data and then proceeds to use some himself a few sentences later.

He also claims that several graphs showing correlation are absolute definative proof of global warming without really discussing which is the cause and which is teh effect.

The truth of the matter as far as I can see is that the earth if following its normal temprature cycle, looking at ice core samples the average world temprature has been measured going back to before the new testamant. The earth is currently suffering from a cool period that it is just starting to come out of, the global warming has been predicted for near a century, and if you do a quick search on google for predicted temprature changes caused by changes in the earths orbit and axis you should come up with a few reliable predictions.

Considering how little carbon emmisions we produce compared to nature itself I cannot believe we are going to be the death of the world through global warming, especially when 'prominant global warming specialists' hired by the various governments put together a report based on carbon levels including types of carbon that do not store heat.

Pollution is one problem we need to solve though, we are polluting the worl with a huge number of contaminants that are killing off the things we need to survive.

I checked one claim that they "debunk". Specifically the claim that other planets are warming as well. In a nutshell, the response they advocate is "That's an interesting coincidence, but it is up to the believers in a natural phenomenon to produce proof of their idea. Those who say global warming is human-caused get a free pass." I grant that the actual wording is more complex; but that is the general meaning.

They assume their conclusion at the onset and use it to "debunk" dissenters. I am not impressed with people who call that effective.

I think it boils down to this -
cities are the pimples on this Earth.
Are they just infected pores
or fatal measles?
Until we find a doctor
who can correctly diagnose a plantary ailment,
we won't know.

I think pimples are more likely, but that doesn't mean the planet's not growing warmer, just that we are too insignificant to be causing it. What kind of ego could believe humans could warm the planet?

I think it boils down to this -
cities are the pimples on this Earth.
Are they just infected pores
or fatal measles?
Until we find a doctor
who can correctly diagnose a plantary ailment,
we won't know.

I think pimples are more likely, but that doesn't mean the planet's not growing warmer, just that we are too insignificant to be causing it. What kind of ego could believe humans that could warm the planet?